VMware Workstation in my opinion is one the reasonable tools I ever get to know and use. I use it for many reasons like testing, P2P downloading or sometimes even for surfing on the Internet (on the bad ones, you know ;-)

Porting VMware Workstation on Slackware is not that complicated, although Slackware is not (yet) officially supported by VMware. One pitfall is that the VMware installer assumes a “System V” environment, Slackware on the other hand uses a BSD oriented approach. This is still true with Slackware 12, even though Slackware now supports parts of the Sys V environment such as the directory structure in /etc and can even make use of them :-)

In Slackware 12, during boot time, scripts are still called from within /etc/rc.d, but additional scripts like the VMware start script can now either be launched using the Sys V approach or the accustomed BSD oriented.

As a result of the changes introduced with Slackware 12, the install procedure with older Slackware versions is slightly different and will take a little more time. Proceed to the proper section depending on your Slackware version.

VMware on Slackware 12

Well, this is quite easy since Slackware 12 is “ready” for VMware.

Step 1:

Ectract the VMware installer tarball in a directory of your choice and change into it. Execute installer

cd vmware-distrib./vmware-install.pl

Step 2:

VMware installs by default in /usr/local – I changed it accordingly to be Slackware style compliant.

Step 3:

When the setup script asks for the location of the start up scripts you might want to tell it that /etc is the directory. Answer the next few questions according to your preferences, until you get to the point where the installer asks you whether it should invoke “vmware-config.pl” – answer the question with “no”.

Step 4:

Instead we choose to run vmware-config with a little extra switch, causing vmware-config to compile new modules suitable for your box.

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl --compile

Make sure you provide the path to your kernel header files – normally the path suggested by the config script is just fine.

Step 5:

After setup has finished you are free to leave the VMware start up scripts where setup has placed them or change to the old style, as described in the chapter “VMware on Slackware <12”.

Step 6:

Make sure you have appropriate rights on VMware executable binaries in /usr/bin (e.g. 550) and the directory holding your virtual machines (I assume you do not work under root rights). You might want to authorize your primary user group on these files / directories or incorporate a dedicated group, e.g. a “vmware” group.

Step 7:

Place a shortcut pointing to /usr/bin/vmware on your desktop. You are required to enter license details when starting VMware for the first time.

Step 8:

Install VMware tools inside your guest system.

VMware on Slackware <12

Step 1:

As I mentioned in the outset, Slackware is missing the necessary Sys V setup in /etc. So the first step would be to create the necessary setup – if you fail to do so, setup will complain and give up.

cd /etcmkdir init.dfor i in {0,1,2,3,4,5,6}; do mkdir rc$i.d; done

Step 2:

Ectract the VMware installer tarball in a directory of your choice and change into it. Execute the installer

cd vmware-distrib./vmware-install.pl

Step 3:

VMware installs in /usr/local – I changed it accordingly to be Slackware style compliant.

Step 4:

When the setup script asks for the location of the start up scripts you might want to tell it that /etc is the directory. Answer the next few questions according to your preferences, until you get to the point where the installer asks you whether it should invoke “vmware-config.pl” – answer the question with “no”.

Step 5:

Instead we choose to run vmware-config with a little extra switch, causing vmware-config to compile new modules suitable for your box.

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl --compile

Make sure you provide the path to your kernel header files – normally the path suggested by the config script is just fine.

Step 6:

After setup has finished, we need to make some changes in order to get VMware up and running. First would be, to copy the VMware script in /etc/init.d to /etc/rc.d/rc.vmware and make it executable.

cp /etc/init.d/vmware /etc/rc.d/rc.vmwarechmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.vmware

Step 7:

Now we need a few lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to fire up VMware when booting the computer

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vmware ]; then/etc/rc.d/rc.vmware startfi

Step 8:

Now we could get rid of the Sys V setup structure in /etc. Nevertheless, I recommend to keep them as you would need it in case of reinstallation, version upgrade or new module compilation after a Linux kernel upgrade.

Make sure you have appropriate rights on VMware executable binaries in /usr/bin (e.g. 550) and the directory holding your virtual machines (I assume you do not work under root rights). You might want to authorize your primary user group on these files / directories or incorporate a dedicated group, e.g. a “vmware” group.

Step 10:

Place a shortcut pointing to /usr/bin/vmware on your desktop. You are required to enter license details when starting VMware for the first time.

Step 11:

Install VMware tools inside your guest system.

After a Kernel Upgrade

Since we decided to use self compiled modules , we have to redo this step every time after a Linux kernel upgrade. No big issue, this will take only a few seconds.

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl --compile

Make sure you provide the path to your kernel header files – normally the path suggested by the config script is just fine.

VMware Workstation Patches

Petr Vandrovec provides compatibility and functional updates for VMware Workstation between the release of new VMware Workstation versions. Try “vmware any any” in the search engine of your choice. To install, follow the enclosed instructions in the tarball.